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"He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind; And the foolish shall be servant to the wise of heart." Proverbs 11:29

STANLEY KRAMER (29 September 1913, Brooklyn—19 February 2001, Woodland Hills, CA, penumonia) from Leonard Maltin's Film Encyclopedia:Although unfashionable with latter-day film critics who find some of his "message movies" to be simplistic, can take credit for producing (and later directing) some of Hollywood's boldest, most socially conscious movies-at a time when much of the industry was reverting to formula and cowering in the wake of the Communist witch-hunts. Moreover, his projects consistently attracted the 14 FEBRUARY 2006, XII:5 top talent working on both sides of the cameras in Hollywood. Making STANLEY KRAMER: INHERIT THE WIND 1960 his pictures independently gave Kramer freedom from studio 128 min. interference, and he produced a run of powerful films, among them the Spencer Tracy...Henry Drummond gritty boxing drama Champion a study of Army racism, Home of the Fredric March...Matthew Harrison Brady Brave (both 1949); a drama of paralyzed war veterans, The Men (1950, ...E. K. Hornbeck Marlon Brando's first film); a notable adaptation of Arthur Miller's play Dick York...Bertram T. Cates Death of a Salesman (1951); and the antiMcCarthy , High Noon Donna Anderson...Rachel Brown (1952). He then signed with Columbia, where he produced the first Harry Morgan...Judge Mel "biker" film, The Wild One and The Caine Mutiny (both 1954), as well as Claude Akins...Rev. Jeremiah Brown a Dr. Seuss musical fantasy, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953), a Elliott Reid...Prosecutor Tom Davenport notorious flop in its day but now a cult classic. Kramer finally began Paul Hartman...Deputy Horace Meeker (bailiff) directing with, oddly, a glossy soap opera, (1955). Philip Coolidge...Mayor Jason Carter After helming a large-scale actioner, The Pride and the Passion Noah Beery Jr....John Stebbins (1957), he returned to social commentary, attacking racism in The Norman Fell...WGN Chicago Radio Broadcaster Defiant Ones (1958, Oscar-nominated for Best Picture and Best Director), nuclear proliferation in On the Beach (1959), creationism in Directed by Stanley Kramer Inherit the Wind (1960), and Nazi war criminals in Judgment at Original play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Nuremberg (1961, Oscar-nominated for Best Picture and Director). Screenplay by Challenged to make something "a little less serious," he vowed to make Produced by Stanley Kramer...producer the "comedy to end all comedies," and almost pulled it off with the Cinematography by Ernest Laszlo elephantine, overproduced, all-star blockbuster It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), still his most popular film. After a lavish adaptation of Ship of Fools (1965), Kramer made Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967, Oscar-nominated for Best Picture and Director), which dealt head-on with interracial marriage. His later films, including The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969), R.P.M (1970), Bless the Beasts and Children (1971), the underrated Oklahoma Crude (1973), and (1977), were not successful, to say the least. (1979), a particularly aloof and unconvincing thriller, was dismissed by critics and audiences alike, making it a dismal swan song to Kramer's career. In 1980 he retired and moved to Seattle, where he taught and wrote a newspaper column; a decade later he was back in Hollywood, planning new film projects.

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (from Wikipedia) (April 5, 1900, He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the second son of Milwaukee – June 10, 1967, Hollywood, diabetes-related heart John Edward Tracy, a hard-drinking Irish American Catholic truck attack ) was an American film actor who appeared in 74 films salesman, and Caroline Brown, a Protestant turned Christian from 1930 to 1967. He is often regarded as one of the finest actors Scientist. Tracy's paternal grandparents, John Tracy and Mary in motion picture history. Guhin, were born in Ireland. His mother's ancestry dates back to Thomas Stebbins, who immigrated from England in the late to the Navy, Manslaughter and Laughter (all 1930)-before 1630s. At the beginning of World War I, Tracy left school to achieving his first major success, repeating a role he'd performed enlist in the Navy, but remained in Norfolk Navy Yard, Virginia on stage, broadly mimicking John Barrymore in the film throughout the war. Afterward he attended Ripon College where adaptation of The Royal Family of Broadway (1930), and earning he appeared in a play entitled The Truth, and decided on acting as his first Oscar nomination in the process. a career. In the early 1920s he attended the Academy of Dramatic Following several routine assignments in 1931, March Arts in New York. For several years he performed in stock in lobbied for and won the dual role in Rouben Mamoulian's Michigan, Canada, and Ohio. Finally in 1930 he appeared in a hit production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (released 1932), resulting play on Broadway, The Last Mile. in his best screen outing to date, which won him a Best Actor In 1923 he married Louise Treadwell. They had two Academy Award. Today, his Mr. Hyde seems very much over the children, John and Louise (Susie). In 1930, director John Ford top, with March slobbering over his grotesque makeup and saw Tracy in the play The Last Mile and signed him to do Up the chewing whatever scenery hasn't been nailed down. Nonetheless, River for Fox Pictures. Shortly after that he and his family moved his phenomenal success in the part made him one of Hollywood's to Hollywood, where he made over 25 films in five years. hottest tickets. In 1935 Tracy signed with MGM. He won the Oscar for Still a relatively young man, March had the leading man's Best Actor two years in a row, for Captains Courageous (1937) classic good looks, which served him well in Merrily We Go to and Boys Town (1938). He was also nominated for San Francisco Hell (1932), The Sign of the Cross (also 1932, memorable in this (1936), Father of the Bride (1950), Bad Day at Black Rock Cecil B. DeMille spectacular as a Roman officer won over to (1955), The Old Man and the Sea (1958), Inherit the Wind Christianity), Tonight Is Ours, The Eagle and the Hawk (both (1960), (1961), and Guess Who's Coming 1933), Design for Living (also 1933, particularly engaging in this to Dinner (1967). He and Laurence Olivier share the record for sophisticated Noël Coward comedy), Death Takes a Holiday the most best actor Oscar nominations (9). (another well remembered role, as the Grim Reaper himself), In 1941 he began a relationship with Katharine Hepburn, Good Dame, Affairs of Cellini (in the title role), The Barretts of whose agile mind and New England brogue complemented Tracy's Wimpole Street (as Robert Browning), We Live Again (all 1934), easy working-class machismo very well. Though estranged from Les Miserables (as the persecuted Jean Valjean), Anna Karenina, his wife Louise, he was a devout Catholic and never divorced. He The Dark Angel (all 1935), Anthony Adverse (in the title role), and and Hepburn made nine films together. Seventeen days after The Road to Glory (both 1936). filming had completed on his last film, Guess Who's Coming to Two David O. Selznick productions in 1937, both filmed Dinner, with Hepburn, he died from a massive heart attack at the in the then-novel threestrip Technicolor process, showed March to age of 67. He is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery particularly good advantage: In A Star Is Born he was in Glendale, . Oscar-nominated for the role of Norman Maine, a washed-up More than thirty years after his death, Tracy is still movie star whose career fades as his young wife's soars. In widely considered one of the most skillful actors of his time. He Nothing Sacred he played the conniving reporter who makes a could portray the hero, the villain, or the comedian, and make the media celebrity of Carole Lombard, who's mistakenly thought to audience believe he truly was the character he played. Tracy was be dying. Those roles, along with his starring stints as Jean Lafitte one of Hollywood's earliest "realistic" actors; his performances in DeMille's The Buccaneer and a debonair detective in Tay have stood the test of time. Garnett's Trade Winds (both 1938), elevated March to a lofty A new full length biography of Spencer Tracy is pinnacle reached by few other stars in the Hollywood of the currently being written by James Curtis, author of the acclaimed 1930s. 2003 biography of W.C. Fields. March took fewer film assignments in the 1940s. Susan and God, Victory (both 1940), So Ends Our Night, One Foot in FREDERICK MARCH (30 August 1897, Racine, WI—14 April Heaven, Bedtime Story (all 1941), I Married a Witch (1942), The 1975, Los Angeles, prostate cancer) from Leonard Maltin's Adventures of Mark Twain and Tomorrow the World (both 1944) Movie Encyclopedia: One of the finest actors who ever worked were, for the most part, worthy vehicles for the star, but none of onscreen, Fredric March resisted typecasting by the studios-and, them achieved the success of his best films of the preceding in fact, refused long- term contracts, hand-picking his roles with decade. A notable exception: the Academy Award-winning classic incredible success. The result was an exemplary film career. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, a Goldwyn film directed by Bitten by the acting bug while studying economics in college, he William Wyler), a nearly perfect production from every participated in campus dramatics but followed through on his standpoint, offered March a strong role as a returning WW2 original plans and, after graduating, went to New York to work at veteran; he won his second Oscar for the performance. the National City Bank. A brush with death (necessitating an By this time March was working on Broadway as often as emergency appendectomy) shocked him into abandoning the his schedule allowed, and after the war he chose his screen roles financial world in favor of an acting career. After working in bit with even greater care. He starred in Another Part of the Forest, roles for several years (during which time he also worked as an An Act of Murder (both 1948, in the latter with Eldridge), extra in New Yorkmade films, beginning with 1921's The Devil), Christopher Columbus (1949, in the title role), Death of a he won his first Broadway lead in 1926. While touring with the Salesman (1951, as Arthur Miller's tired, tragic Willy Loman, for Theatre Guild's first repertory troupe (accompanied by his new which he was Oscar-nominated), It's a Big Country (1952), Man wife, actress Florence Eldridge), March landed a Paramount on a Tightrope (1953), Executive Suite (1954), The Bridges at Pictures contract. He appeared in a number of early talkies-among Toko-Ri (1954), The Desperate Hours (1955, effective as the them The Dummy, The Wild Party, The Studio Murder Mystery, put-upon paterfamilias), Alexander the Great, The Man in the Jealousy (all 1929), Sarah and Son, Paramount on Parade, True Gray Flannel Suit (both 1956), and the touching Middle of the Night (1959). director's stripes with On the Town (1949), the wonderful Betty Inherit the Wind (1960), Stanley Kramer's riveting Comden-Adolph GreenLeonard Bernstein musical about sailors filmization of the Jerome Lawrence-Robert E. Lee play about the on leave in New York, New York, in which Kelly also starred. Scopes "monkey trial," gave March his flashiest latter-day Among its other distinctions was the fact that this musical left the character part, that of the fiery orator based on William Jennings confines of a Hollywood studio and filmed its exteriors on Bryan (opposite Spencer Tracy, whose character was modeled location. After making Summer Stock (1950) with former costar after Clarence Darrow), and marked his last screen appearance Judy Garland, Kelly took a dramatic role in that year's Black Hand with Eldridge, who played his faithful wife. His final films which cast the dark-haired performer as an Italian-American included The Young Doctors (1961), The Condemned of Altona crimebuster. Although directed by Vincente Minnelli, An (1962), Seven Days in May (1964, properly authoritative as a U.S. American in Paris (1951) bore Kelly's mark just as strongly. (He is president), Hombre (1967), EB> (1969), and The Iceman Cometh a lifelong Francophile.) His singing and dancing were never better (1973, his last). Throughout the years he also lent his name, and showcased, and the lengthy Gershwin ballet that climaxes the film talent, to worthy causes, and, with his wife, was a liberal activist in is one of the highpoints of Kelly's career. It earned him a special the Democratic party. Academy Award that year. He took a supporting part in an all-star, picaresque drama, It's a Big Country (also 1951) before joining GENE KELLY (23 August 1912, Pittsburgh—2 February 1996, forces with Donen for Singin' in the Rain (1952), arguably the Beverly Hills, complications from two strokes) acted in 47 films finest movie musical of all time, and a delightful spoof of and directed 12. Bio from Leonard Maltin’s Film Hollywood's chaotic transition from silent films to sound. Encyclopedia: “The enduring image of this handsome, robust Supported by Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds, Kelly the performer gaily dancing to and crooning "Singin' in the Rain" (in Actor turned in one of his best performances, while Kelly the the classic 1952 film of the same name), one of the most Dancer/Choreographer provided inventive terpsichore and Kelly frequently repeated sequences in movie history, shouldn't obscure the Codirector contributed dynamic staging. With this one film he the other impressive achievements in his lengthy, generally reached the apogee of his career. Kelly went dramatic again in The distinguished career. A dancer since childhood, Kelly studied Devil Makes Three (1952), and then had to face the fact that economics at Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh, but had MGM was scaling back on the production of lavish musicals. the misfortune of graduating during the Depression and was Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon (1954), directed by Minnelli, was forced to take menial jobs to support himself. At one time a supposed to have been filmed in Scotland, but budget cutbacks dancing teacher, he finally parlayed his natural ability into a kept it on a soundstage instead. Although quite entertaining it was chorus-boy assignment on the Broadway stage. In 1940 he won not the film Kelly had hoped for. He persuaded MGM to let him the leading role in Rodgers and Hart's "Pal Joey," which make Invitation to the Dance (1957, but filmed years earlier), but catapulted him to stardom. During this period he also this earnest, ambitious episodic dance musical was not a great choreographed several hit plays, including the 1941 production of success artistically or financially. Les Girls (also 1957) was "Best Foot Forward." It was probably inevitable that Kelly should Kelly's last starring musical, a pleasant soufflé with Cole Porter wind up in Hollywood, where the film musical had produced some songs and George Cukor direction. (Kelly did make an amusing of the screen's most popular players. Kelly's good looks, brawny cameo as Yves Montand's dancing coach in 1960's Let's Make physique, and vigorous, athletic dancing style set him apart from Love and appeared in Jacques Demy's French-made homage to the most male dancers, and while he lacked Fred Astaire's stylish Hollywood musical, The Young Girls of Rochefort in 1968, elegance, he more than made up for it with his own ebullience and though his singing voice was-incredibly-dubbed in the French- winning personality. Paired with Judy Garland in For Me and My language version. But his singing and dancing, for the most part, Gal (1942), he got off to a fine start, making a hit with audiences was confined to television from the 1960s on.) Acting had never and eliciting favorable reviews. Kelly spent most of his film career been Kelly's strongest suit, but he was tailor-made for the part of a at MGM, home of the fabled Arthur Freed unit, which produced charming heel in Marjorie Morningstar (1958). He was less ideal Hollywood's finest musicals....In Anchors Aweigh (1945) he and in the role of a cynical reporter, inspired by H. L. Mencken, in choreographic partner Stanley Donen concocted a brilliant and Inherit the Wind (1960). By this time Kelly was content to spend innovative dance sequence with the animated Jerry the Mouse. most of his time behind the camera. He directed (The musical also earned Kelly a Best Actor Oscar nomination, (1957, in which he also starred), (1958), and marked the first of three screen teamings with , Jackie Gleason's pantomime vehicle Gigot (1962), a 1965 telefilm whom he taught to dance.) Ziegfeld Follies (1946) teamed him remake of Woman of the Year the all-star comedy A Guide for the with Fred Astaire for the amusing "Babbitt and the Bromide" Married Man (1967), the overstuffed musical Hello, Dolly! number. Words and Music (1948), a dubious biography of (1969), and (1970)....” He won an songwriters Rodgers and Hart, enabled him to make a guest Honorary Academy in 1952, and in 1985 the American Film appearance performing an impressive rendition of Rodgers' Institute gave him its Life Achievement Award "Slaughter on 10th Avenue" ballet. The Pirate (1948) teamed him from World Film Directors Vol II. Ed John Wakeman. H. H. with Judy Garland in a particularly exuberant musical, and The Wilson Co. NY 1988 Three Musketeers (also 1948) allowed Kelly, as D'Artagnan, to use his graceful body movements in a nonmusical swashbuckler. American director, producer, and scenarist, Stanley Kramer was Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), a modestly entertaining born into a family that had some movie connections, albeit on the baseball musical, gave Kelly and Donen screen credit for distribution side of the industry. He attended DeWitt High School contributing the picture's storyline. Only Living in a Big Way in the Bronx and went on to New York University, where he (1947), a notorious flop about postwar reacclimation, marred sometimes wrote for The Medley, the college humor magazine. Kelly's late 1940s winning streak. Kelly and Donen earned their Kramer graduated with a B.S. in 1933, in the depths of the Depression, and went out to Hollywood to write movies. It took Brave (1949), adapted from Arthur Laurent’s play about anti- him awhile to realize this extravagant ambition, but he did land an Semitism, but now dealing with the persecution of a black soldier $18-a-week job shifting scenery and such with a “swing gang.” by his white “comrades.” It was an even bigger hit than Champion. The producer the launched Stanley Kramer The following year Kramer joined MGM’s research Productions Inc. and continued his triumphal progress with The department, from there making his way into the cutting Men (1950), a drama about paraplegic war veterans, teaming a department. It was during his three years as an apprentice editor director whose career had been quietly fading, Fred Zinnemann, and editor that he learned the rudiments of filmmaking—all that with Marlon Brando in his first screen role. Cyrano de Bergerac he ever did learn according to his numerous hostile critics. He is (1950), a holiday from contemporary tracts, brought stardom and said to have shown exceptional aptitude as a cutter, acquiring a an Oscar to José Ferrer, and was followed by Laslo Benedek’s sense of structure that later enabled him to edit his own films “in screen version of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, with the camera” with minimal wastage. Frederic March as Willy Loman, and then by ’s Kramer left MGM when he sold his first script—an . original story—to Columbia. He followed it to that studio, In 1952 Kramer hired Edward Dmytryk, a newly becoming a member of Columbia’s script department, and then rehabilitated member of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten, to direct moved on again to work in the same capacity for Republic. The Sniper, an unusually humane film about a young psychopath. Between studio assignments, Kramer also wrote for radio.. . . This remarkable series of movies ended with the best of them, During World War II, Kramer made training and High Noon (1952), directed by Zinnemann and starring the aging orientation films for the Signal Corps, emerging as a first Gary Cooper. It won four Oscars and has been variously claimed lieutenant. Afterwards, instead of returning to MGM, he formed as an allegory about McCarthyism and “the greatest Western ever his own production company and bought the rights to Taylor made.” Caldwell’s bestselling novel This Side of Innocence. Production For many critics, the films he made as an independent delays forced Kramer to sell his interest in this package, and in producer between 1949 and 1952 were Kramer’s finest May 1947m together with and others, he established achievements—an almost impossible demonstration that it was Screen Plays Inc. And acquired the rights to the stories of Ring still possible for a person of ability, imagination, and Lardner. were persuaded to handle distribution, and determination to break the stranglehold of the big studios, and that Kramer drummed up backing for his first independent film as without compromising his humanitarian principles. Kramer was producer, So This is New York (1948). Based on Lardner’s The adulated on all sides as the “conscience” of the American film Bog Town, and directed by , it was a comedy industry, and perhaps its redeemer. But although Kramer had starring the radio actor . produced eight notable and mostly successful pictures in less than Like most independent low-budget productions, So This four years, his financial base was apparently still to uncertain to is New York failed at the box office and disappeared without allow him to go on alone. In 1951 his production unit became the making a ripple on the glossy surface of the industry. Kramer tried Stanley Kramer Company, working under the banner of Columbia, again with a very different Larnder story about an ambitious and and committed to produce thirty movies in five years. unscrupulous boxer. Scripted by Carl Foreman (like most of Kramer’s independence was supposed to remain absolute Kramer’s early productions)m it was tailored to the talents of Kirk under the new arrangement but evidently it did not. The films he Douglas, an ex-wrestler who was just beginning to make a name oversaw for Columbia were glossier and more expensive in for himself as a movie actor. Kramer—whose gift for recognizing casting and “production values” and closer in content and finish to talent has been only grudgingly acknowledged—also cast two other big-studio productions, generally lacking the do-it-yourself struggling actresses, Ruth Roman and Lola Albright, and entrusted excitement of his earlier movies. ...David Thompson wrote with t he direction to Mark Robson, formerly confined to B-movies. only slight exaggeration that there was “not a good film in the lot.” Champion (1949), made in twenty-three days on a budget All of them lost money except The Caine Mutiny....Although of $590,000, emerged as an intense and exciting antiboxing drama Kramer had completed less than a third of the thirty films he had with a tour de force performance from Douglas as the ruthless contracted to make for Columbia, he and the studio agreed to part egomaniac of the title. It brought immediate (if in some cases company.... (1958) was a different matter, brief) stardom to Douglas, Roman, and Albright, launched Mark and is regarded by most critics as the best film Kramer has Robson’s career as an important director, and was an immense directed, It is a powerful parable about the escape and pursuit of box-office success. The film’s editor, Harry Gerstad, received an two convicts in the Deep South, one black and one white. The Academy Award, and there were Oscar nominations for Kirk ordeals and terrors of the manhunt are compounded by the fact Douglas, Arthur Kennedy, Carl Foreman, and the photographer that the white man (Tony Curtis) is an ignorant young racist; the Franz Planer. black (Sidney Poitier) is a good man made violent by injustice. Having found his metier, Kramer followed Champion The latter wants to head north, away from the desperately real with a string of films dealing with contemporary social problems, danger of lynching; the white man wants to hole up in the South, made on low budgets and mostly without star names. Most of where he knows the country and the people. But they are shackled them, as Pauline Kael says, “ were melodramas with . . .redeeming together, first by a length of chain, then by a dawning sense of social importance; and if their messages were often irritatingly their brotherhood in suffering and fear.... self-righteous, the situations and settings were, nevertheless, Kramer’s apotheosis in the eyes of more biddable excitingly modern, relevant.” commentators came when he tackled the problem of The Bomb Robson’s second picture for Kramer was Home of the itself. On the Beach (1959), adapted by John Paxton from Nevil Shute’s novel, takes place in what was then the near future, 1964. World War III has obliterated thee Northern Hemisphere and work,” even though “it is the sort of film that is indulgently clouds of irradiated dust are bring carried towards Australia, assumed to be serious because of its subject.: She maintained that where the inhabitants of Melbourne have five months in which to the courtroom scenes fabricate “a clash that is really heavily pursue vain hopes of a reprieve and, when these fail, to prepare for rigged,” that the film draws “fairly cheaply” on the Belsen the end. The all-star cast includes an American submarine newsreels, and that the editing “has the subtlety of a ton of commander (Gregory Peck), a fading beauty who drowns her bricks.” compassion for the dying world in brandy (Ava Gardner), a ...John Russell Taylor has pointed out that Kramer’s disillusioned scientist with a taste for terminal auto racing (Fred films “assemble every possible guarantee of success in the way of Astaire), and a young Australian naval attaché (Anthony Perkins) stellar casts and, whatever the critics may say about them, seem at odds with his wife over suicide. The cameraman, neorealist almost infallibly to work like the proverbial machine for making Giuseppe Rotunno, managed to subdue the refulgence of this cast money.” This was certainly the case with Guess Who’s Coming to with grainy black and white; the documentary look is particularly Dinner (1967), said to have been one of the most profitable effective in the eerie, highly evocative studies of depopulated movies ever made. cities. In the face of such lethal notices [for his later films] it is “It may be,” Linus Pauling thought, “that some years startling to recall that twenty years earlier Kramer was one of the from now we can look back and say that On the Beach is the most adulated directors in America, his films loaded with honors movie that saved the world.” and blessed by almost automatic commercial success. The recent Inherit the Wind (1960), adapted from a stage play, is a hostility of the critical establishment is no doubt to some extent a somewhat fictionalized account of the 1925 “monkey trial” in reaction against the excessive praise that greeted Kramer’s earlier Dayton, Tennessee. The defendant was John Thomas Scopes, a work, and Andrew Sarris once admitted that he had submitted the young schoolteacher accused of offending against a Tennessee director to “overabuse,” confessing that “if Kramer were not so statute that forbade the teaching of Darwinian theories of vulnerable in his sincerity, he would not have made such a evolution. The case developed into a famous battle of legal giants tempting target.” between the greatest trial lawyer of the day, the agnostic rationalist All the same, Sarris went on, Kramer is “simply not a Clarence Darrow, and the fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan, good director. He lacks the intuitive feel for the medium, the a formidable political orator of the old school. instinctively kinetic insight into dramatic materials. He does Spencer Tracy played the Darrow character and Frederic everything by the numbers, and the lumbering machinery of his March the ailing Bryan (both given fictitious names in the film), technique is always in full view of the audience.” And David and both delivered virtuoso performances. The “magnetic contest” Denby wrote in 1970 that “Kramer’s ambitions and his failures between those two takes place in a sweltering Tennessee have often been linked to a kind of muddled and opportunistic courtroom where both judge and jury are impregnably prejudiced liberalism whose qualities in the arts can be indicated by a list of against Darwin. The film is undeniably dramatic and entertaining, its compromises: it’s quick and easy with judgments and moral but angered some critics because all the cards are stacked in favor categories but incapable of imagining the experience of evil, the of Darrow and the rationalist minority and against the contradictions of virtue, the dangers of the moral life in general; it fundamentalists, who as Time’s reviewer wrote are "wildly and sincerely dislikes prejudice but defends the victims of prejudice by unjustly” caricatured. It seemed to Derek Prouse that “one is cleaning and sprucing them to the point where their antagonists ensconced from the outset in a plush seat of moral superiority; one look reassuringly insane; it praises variety and diversity but feels is flattered, never pricked.” comfortable only with an overall scaling down and flattening of human strangeness, wildness, and complexity; it has explanations Another courtroom drama followed, involving equally for everything but is constantly being surprised.”... massive issues—the three-hour Judgment at Nuremburg (1961), scripted by from his own television play. Spencer Kramer retired from the film industry after The Runner Tracy gave another performance of rugged honesty as a Maine Stumbles (1979) and moved to Seattle, where he taught at the judge sent in 1948 to preside over the second series of Nazi war University of Washington and at Bellevue Community College. crime trials. Burt Lancaster plays a once eminent German jurist, He also hosted a local television program and contributed a Richard Widmark the American military prosecutor, and weekly column “on everything” to the Seattle Times. “I felt that Maximilian Schell the lawyer who flamboyantly defends the four after being half a step ahead for many years, I was suddenly half a judges on trail. Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift also appear, step behind. This helped me catch up again.” Then in the spring of representing the shattered victims of the accused, and Marlene 1987 he was asked by David Putnam, president of Columbia Dietrich is the unregenerate widow of a Nazi general....Hollis Pictures, to return to Hollywood to develop new projects for the Alpert wrote that “Stanley Kramer has once again used film studio. “I don’t believe films change anyone’s mind,” Kramer importantly” and “continues to emerge as the only truly said, “but I was spawned during the Roosevelt era, a time of great responsible moviemaker in Hollywood.” Arthur Knight admitted change, and I still believe in trying to get people to think.” that in Kramer’s earlier films “there was always the nagging Inherit the Wind (1960), by / January 28, 2006 suspicion that ...[Kramer’s] dream might have been better served by more sensitive, less forthright direction,” but went on to say “History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the that here, “from first to last, the director is in command of his second time as farce.”—Karl Marx material....he has not only added hugely to his stature as a This statement by Karl Marx admirably serves two producer-director, but to the stature of American film as well.” functions: (1) it describes the difference between the two times the ... found the picture “a very laborious teaching of Darwin’s theories were put on trial in this country, in Tennessee in 1925 and in in 2005; (2) Because it is Tracy’s Drummond/Darrow character defines the same argument from Karl Marx, it will automatically be rejected, along with the and persuasively wins it. words to follow, by those who judge a statement not by its content ..."Inherit the Wind" is typical of the films produced and directed but by its source. That is precisely the argument between by Stanley Kramer (1913-2001), a liberal who made movies that Darwinism and creationism. Stanley Kramer’s movie “Inherit the had opinions and took stands. He was dismissed by some critics Wind” (1960) is a movie about a courtroom battle between those for saddling his films with pious messages, for preferring speeches who believe the Bible is literally true and those who believe, as to visual style and cinematic originality, but he stuck to his guns. the Spencer Tracy character puts it, that “an idea is a greater Although his films like “On the Beach” (1959), “Judgment at monument than a cathedral.” Nuremburg” (1961), “Ship of Fools” (1965), “Guess Who’s The so-called Monkey Trial of 1925 put a young high school Coming to Dinner” (1967) and “Bless the Beasts and Children” teacher named John T. Scopes on trial for violating a state law, (1971) took predictable positions on nuclear war, the Holocaust, passed the same year, prohibiting the teaching of any theory that interracial marriage and the preservation of species, they blended denied the biblical account of divine creation. Darwin’s theory of ideas and entertainment in a persuasive mixture. If his messages evolution was therefore on trial. Two of the most famous lawyers were predictable, they were also forthright; some of today’s and orators in the land contested the case. Scopes was defended by message movies, for example the splendid “Syriana,” are so the legendary Clarence Darrow, and the prosecution was led by labyrinthine that viewers must sense the message almost by three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. instinct. Darrow’s expenses were paid by the Baltimore Sun papers, home Strange, that 46 years after it was made and 81 years after the of the famous H.L. Mencken, who covered the trial with many Scopes trial, it is “Inherit the Wind” among all of Kramer’s films snorts and guffaws. that seems most relevant and still generates controversy. In Kramer’s film, Darrow becomes Henry Drummond (Spencer Note especially his final argument to the jury, which he performed Tracy), Bryan is Matthew Harrison Brady (Frederic March), in an unbroken shot. In the last scene of the film, Drummond Mencken is E.K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly), and Scopes is Bertram stands in the empty courtroom, picks up a Bible in one hand and D. Cates (Dick York). Another great player is the gravel-voiced Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in the other, smiles, claps them Harry Morgan, as the judge. So obviously were the characters together, and packs them both under his arm. How should we take based on their historical sources that the back of the DVD simply this scene? Has he reconciled the two books, or does he think he’ll refers to them as “Bryan” and “Darrow,” as if their names had not need them both for the appeal? been changed. Seen 46 years after its release but only a few months after Darwin Tennessee's 1925 anti-evolution statutes: was once again on trial in Dover, Penn., “Inherit the Wind” is a AN ACT prohibiting the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all film that rebukes the past when it might also have feared the the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of future. Beliefs that seemed like ancient history to Kramer have Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public had a surprising resiliency; two recent polls show that 38 percent school funds of the State, and to provide penalties for the of American teenagers believe “God created humans pretty much violations thereof. in their present form within the last 10,000 years or so,” and 54 Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of percent of American adults doubt that man evolved from earlier Tennessee, That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the species. There is hardly a politician in the land with courage Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State enough to state that they are wrong. which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds ...What is astonishing in this 1960 film is the gutsy way it engages of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine in ideas, pulls no punches in its language, and allows the Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that characters long and impassioned speeches. There are a lot of man has descended from a lower order of animals. words here, well-written and spoken, and not condescending to the Section 2. Be it further enacted, That any teacher found guilty of audience. Both Tracy and March vent an anger and passion the violation of this Act, Shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and through their characters that ventures beyond acting into holy zeal. upon conviction, shall be fined not less than One Hundred $ I wonder if a film made today would have the nerve to question (100.00) Dollars nor more than Five Hundred ($ 500.00) Dollars fundamentalism as bluntly as the Tracy character does. The beliefs for each offense. he argues against have crept back into view as “creationist Section 3. Be it further enacted, That this Act take effect from and science,” and it was the notion that this should be offered as an after its passage, the public welfare requiring it. alternative to Darwinism that inspired the 2005 Pennsylvania case. In the movie and in the actual Scopes trial, Bryan was a persuasive orator who proudly defended fundamentalism; his 2005 H.L. Mencken on the Scopes trial: counterparts carefully distanced themselves from religious advocacy and tried to make their case on the basis of “creationist July 9 science.” Their presentation was so unpersuasive that Judge John On the eve of the great contest Dayton is full of sickening surges E. Jones III (a Republican appointed by George W. Bush) not and tremors of doubt. Five or six weeks ago, when the infidel only ruled against them but added that they exhibited “striking Scopes was first laid by the heels, there was no uncertainty in all ignorance” and “breathtaking inanity” and “lied outright under this smiling valley. The town boomers leaped to the assault as one oath.” man. Here was an unexampled, almost a miraculous chance to get ...What is surprising, as I watch “Inherit the Wind,” is how clearly Dayton upon the front pages, to make it talked about, to put it upon the map. But how now? the interior of Afghanistan. That is, locally, upon the process against the infidel Scopes, upon the so-called minds of these Today, with the curtain barely rung up and the worst fundamentalists of upland Tennessee. You have but a dim notice buffooneries to come, it is obvious to even town boomers that of it who have only read it. It was not designed for reading, but for getting upon the map, like patriotism, is not enough. The getting hearing. The clangtint of it was as important as the logic. It rose there must be managed discreetly, adroitly, with careful regard to like a wind and ended like a flourish of bugles. The very judge on psychological niceties. The boomers of Dayton, alas, had no skill the bench, toward the end of it, began to look uneasy. But the at such things, and the experts they called in were all quacks. The morons in the audience, when it was over, simply hissed it. result now turns the communal liver to water. Two months ago the town was obscure and happy. Today it is a universal joke. During the whole time of its delivery the old mountebank, Bryan, sat tight-lipped and unmoved. There is, of I have been attending the permanent town meeting that course, no reason why it should have shaken him. He has these goes on in Robinson's drug store, trying to find out what the town hillbillies locked up in his pen and he knows it. His brand is on optimists have saved from the wreck. All I can find is a sort of them. He is at home among them. Since his earliest days, indeed, mystical confidence that God will somehow come to the rescue to his chief strength has been among the folk of remote hills and reward His old and faithful partisans as they deserve--that good forlorn and lonely farms. Now with his political aspirations all will flow eventually out of what now seems to be heavily evil. gone to pot, he turns to them for religious consolations. They More specifically, it is believed that settlers will be attracted to the understand his peculiar imbecilities. His nonsense is their ideal of town as to some refuge from the atheism of the great urban sense. When he deluges them with his theologic bilge they rejoice Sodoms and Gomorrah. like pilgrims disporting in the river Jordan.... But will these refugees bring any money with them? Will July 15 (the fourth day) they buy lots and build houses? Will they light the fires of the cold and silent blast furnace down the railroad tracks? On these points, A preacher of any sect that admit the literal authenticity of Genesis I regret to report, optimism has to call in theology to aid it. Prayer is free to gather a crowd at any time and talk all he wants. More, can accomplish a lot. It can cure diabetes, find lost pocketbooks he may engage in a disputation with any expert. I have heard at and retain husbands from beating their wives. But is prayer made least a hundred such discussions, and some of them have been any more officious by giving a circus first? Coming to this very acrimonious. But the instant a speaker utters a word against thought, Dayton begins to sweat. divine revelation he begin to disturb the peace and is liable to immediate arrest and confinement in the calaboose beside the The town, I confess, greatly surprised me. I expected to railroad tracks... find a squalid Southern village, with darkies snoozing on the horse blocks, pigs rooting under the houses and the inhabitants full of July 16 (the fifth day) hookworm and malaria. What I found was a country town of In view of the fact that everyone here looks for the jury to bring in charm and even beauty.... a verdict of guilty, it might be expected that the prosecution would July 10 (the first day) show a considerable amiability and allow the defense a rather free play. Instead, it is contesting every point very vigorously and The town boomers have banqueted Darrow as well as Bryan, but taking every advantage of its greatly superior familiarity with local there is no mistaking which of the two has the crowd, which procedure. There is, in fact, a considerable heat in the trial. Bryan means the venire of tried and true men. Bryan has been oozing and the local lawyers for the State sit glaring at the defense all day around the country since his first day here, addressing this and even the Attorney-General, A. T. Stewart, who is supposed to organization and that, presenting the indubitable Word of God in have secret doubts about fundamentalism, has shown such his caressing, ingratiating way, and so making unanimity doubly pugnacity that it has already brought him to forced apologies. unanimous. From the defense yesterday came hints that he was making hay before the sun had legally begun to shine--even that it The high point of yesterday's proceedings was reached was a sort of contempt of court. But no Daytonian believes with the appearance of Dr. Maynard M. Metcalf of the John anything of the sort. What Bryan says doesn't seem to these Hopkins. The doctor is a somewhat chubby man of bland mien, congenial Baptists and Methodists to be argument; it seems to be a and during the first part of his testimony, with the jury present, the mere graceful statement to the obvious.... prosecution apparently viewed his with great equanimity. But the instant he was asked a question bearing directly upon the case at July 13 (the second day) bar there was a flurry in the Bryan pen and Stewart was on his feet It would be hard to imagine a more moral town than Dayton. If it with protests. Another question followed, with more and hotter has any bootleggers, no visitor has heard of them. Ten minutes protests. The judge then excluded the jury and the show began. after I arrived a leading citizen offered me a drink made up half of What ensued was, on the surface, a harmless enough white mule and half of coca cola, but he seems to have been dialogue between Dr. Metcalf and Darrow, but underneath there simply indulging himself in a naughty gesture. No fancy woman was tense drama. At the first question Bryan came out from has been seen in the town since the end of the McKinley behind the State's table and planted himself directly in front of Dr. administration. There is no gambling. There is no place to dance. Metcalf, and not ten feet away. The two McKenzies followed, The relatively wicked, when they would indulge themselves, go to with young Sue Hicks at their heels. Robinson's drug store and debate theology.... Then began one of the clearest, most succinct and withal July 14 (the third day) most eloquent presentations of the case for the evolutionists that I The net effect of Clarence Darrow's great speech yesterday seems have ever heard. The doctor was never at a loss for a word, and to be preciously the same as if he had bawled it up a rainspout in his ideas flowed freely and smoothly. Darrow steered him magnificently. A word or two and he was howling down the wind. "I hope," said the latter nervously, "that counsel intends Another and he hauled up to discharge a broadside. There was no no reflection upon this court." cocksureness in him. Instead he was rather cautious and Darrow hunched his shoulders and looked out of the deprecatory and sometimes he halted and confessed his ignorance. window dreamily. But what he got over before he finished was a superb counterblast to the fundamentalist buncombe. The jury, at least, in theory heard "Your honor," he said, "is, of course, entitled to hope."... nothing of it, but it went whooping into the radio and it went The Scopes trial, from the start, has been carried on in a banging into the face of Bryan.... manner exactly fitted to the anti-evolution law and the simian This old buzzard, having failed to raise the mob against imbecility under it. There hasn't been the slightest pretense to its rulers, now prepares to raise it against its teachers. He can decorum. The rustic judge, a candidate for re-election, has never be the peasants' President, but there is still a chance to be postured the yokels like a clown in a ten-cent side show, and the peasants' Pope. He leads a new crusade, his bald head almost every word he has uttered has been an undisguised appeal glistening, his face streaming with sweat, his chest heaving to their prejudices and superstitions. The chief prosecuting beneath his rumpled alpaca coat. One somehow pities him, despite attorney, beginning like a competent lawyer and a man of his so palpable imbecilities. It is a tragedy, indeed, to begin life as self-respect, ended like a convert at a Billy Sunday revival. It fell a hero and to end it as a buffoon. But let no one, laughing at him, to him, finally, to make a clear and astounding statement of theory underestimate the magic that lies in his black, malignant eye, his of justice prevailing under fundamentalism. What he said, in brief, frayed but still eloquent voice. He can shake and inflame these was that a man accused of infidelity had no rights whatever under poor ignoramuses as no other man among us can shake and Tennessee law... inflame them, and he is desperately eager to order the charge. Darrow has lost this case. It was lost long before he came In Tennessee he is drilling his army. The big battles, he believes, to Dayton. But it seems to me that he has nevertheless performed a will be fought elsewhere. great public service by fighting it to a finish and in a perfectly serious way. Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it July 18 may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that All that remains of the great cause of the State of Tennessee Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the against the infidel Scopes is the formal business of bumping off land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience. the defendant. There may be some legal jousting on Monday and Tennessee, challenging him too timorously and too late, now sees some gaudy oratory on Tuesday, but the main battle is over, with its courts converted into camp meetings and its Bill of Rights Genesis completely triumphant. Judge Raulston finished the made a mock of by its sworn officers of the law. There are other benign business yesterday morning by leaping with soft judicial States that had better look to their arsenals before the Hun is at hosannas into the arms of the prosecution. The sole commentary their gates. of the sardonic Darrow consisted of bringing down a metaphorical custard pie upon the occiput of the learned jurist.

Coming up in the Buffalo Film Seminars XII, Spring 2006

Feb 21 Gillo Pontecorvo The Battle of Algiers 1965 Feb 28 John Boorman Point Blank 1967 Mar 7 Fred Zinneman A Man for All Seasons 1966 Mar 21 Robert Bresson Au hazard Balthazar 1966 Mar 28 Richard Brooks In Cold Blood 1967 Apr 4 Ousmane Sembene Xala 1974 Apr 11 Wim Wenders Wings of Desire 1987 Apr 18 Andre Konchalovsky Runaway Train 1985 Apr 25 Karel Reisz The French Lieutenant's Woman 1981

Clarence Darrow & William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial, Dayton, TN, 1925

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